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Boeing Told To Replace Cockpit Screens Affected By Wi-Fi
Rambo Tribble writes The Federal Aviation Administration has ordered Boeing to replace Honeywell-built cockpit screens that could be affected by wi-fi transmissions. Additionally, the FAA has expressed concerns that other frequencies, such as used by air surveillance and weather radar, could disrupt the displays. The systems involved report airspeed, altitude, heading and pitch and roll to the crew, and the agency stated that a failure could cause a crash. Meanwhile, the order is said to affect over 1,300 aircraft, and some airlines are balking, since the problem has never been seen in operation, that the order presents "a high, and unnecessary, financial burden on operators".
I like a good stiff cockpit.
Queue the many certifications that will pop up for current screens suddenly claiming they aren't affected by wifi to any meaningful degree.
Is that too cynical?
Those poor, poor airline operators.
Cheaper option: Have the flight attendants go around with wifi scanners and arrest people who have it operating during the flight. (And smack them over the head.)
They are ordering that a manufacturer actually do something to make it's product safe rather than just ban wifi? It's not April 1st! Where did this new FAA come from?
>since the problem has never been seen in operation, that the order presents
Let's just wait for some emergencies because of a problem identified in testing instead of acting before they happen.
Sudden Outbreak of Common Sense (tm)
Pretty sure this is the same kind of conversation that was had at GM before the fatalities and subsequent massive recall took place. Cut your losses Boeing and fix this now.
It seems like Honeywell should be on the hook for the upgrades, rather than Boeing, and maybe the FAA should pay most of it since they're insisting on an expensive upgrade that may not be needed.
>Honeywell had suggested that airlines should be forced to install new screens only if wi-fi enabled tablets or other such equipment were used in the cockpit.
>However, the FAA rejected these complaints saying it wanted to "eliminate" any risk of interference.
Seems to me this should be the equivalent of a recall in the auto industry and the manufacturer should have to replace the potentially dangerous item at their own expense not the operator of the aircraft....
Oh man, I'm cryin'
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Wait, slashdot posters are now accepting the idea that personal electronics can affect aircraft electronics ?
"some airlines are balking, since the problem has never been seen in operation, that the order presents 'a high, and unnecessary, financial burden on operators'."
Yeah, it sure sucks that you're involved in an industry where hardening against air surveillance and weather radar are a pre-requisite, and you decided to buy off-spec from what I imagine was the lowest bidder.
Holder is also going after: Front door manufacturers, lock manufacturers, and window manufacturers. When asked why he said, "those things just make it harder for the police to do their job. Someone think of the children!"
...and some airlines are balking, since the problem has never been seen in operation, that the order presents "a high, and unnecessary, financial burden on operators
Did Ford try that argument with exploding Pintos?
I have never ever heard of wifi interfering with an LCD screen. What did they do to them to get them to blank out? Stick them 1 inch in front of a directional 1kW magnetron?
First, I would hope that the avionics themselves were shielded and tested before deployment and use. I mean, we don't want the altimeter interfering with the artificial horizon, do we? (stupid, simple, but real example)
Second, the whole cockpit and supporting avionics and other fight critical systems are in an enclosed conductive vessel, ie the cockpit and support area. It's a Faraday cage within a larger Faraday cage (the aircraft), so Coulomb's law should apply and mitigate this theoretical threat. Wi-Fi (bluetooth and the rest) should not reach the cockpit and instruments from the cabin unless the cockpit door is open. We all know how often that happens these days....
Polite language: red herring
Otherwise: I call BullShite
-Red
...they didn't go the other way with this and just try to ban all wi-fi on airplanes.
Sigh...some days, its like the world just makes sense and people act rationally...
They didn't pay their protection monies. Besides the Aircraft Mechanics Association Union needs work to do.
some airlines are balking, since the problem has never been seen in operation, that the order presents "a high, and unnecessary, financial burden on operators".
Several years before 9/11, pilots were asking that the cockpits be made more secure by installing a $200 lock on the pilot's side of the door giving access to the cockpit. Airlines complained that it would be too expensive. So, thanks to the airlines being too cheap to do something that made sense, more than 3,000 people died, and we now have the TSA going where no man has gone before.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
The LED lightbulbs in my house cause interference with my iPhone. It only happens when the phone is too close to the bulbs (less than 2 feet as I recall). I know this isn't really surprising. The thing that struck me as odd was that the interference pattern showed up on photos as well as on the screen. Great Value bulbs caused more interference than G.E. bulbs.
Per other news outlets Boeing isn't being told to do anything. The FAA is telling Airlines to do something that Boeing had told the Airlines to do two years ago.
and you decided to buy off-spec from what I imagine was the lowest bidder
Yeah. They used Honeywell, a cut rate, shade tree operation that isn't one of the top three commercial avionics producers on Earth. And the results prove it too â" with dozens of no reported operational interference problems at all. Boeing's profit focused greed is killing ever more passengers per mile, in some alternate universe where your worldview makes sense.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Dear Airline,
Please fix your cockpit system.
We, the passengers, LOVE our WiFi gadgets so much that even our kids have WiFi enabled Fisher Price tablets. With the Internet of Things, practically everything has WiFi in it: cameras, phones, tablets, laptops, kids toys, kid tracking devices, etc. And if you think that every single one of these are turned off during the flight, you are fooling yourselves.
Just because there have been no public reports that the system has been interfered with, doesn't mean that it hasn't happened or won't happen. It just means that you have been lucky so far. Take a page out of the car manufacturer's handbook. They had known issues that they didn't fix and look at all of the trouble that they have been in!!! This could be you, only 100x worse.
So, do the right thing, stop complaining, fix your system, and let us get back to our margaritas...
Airline Passenger
Actually (from above post copying the FAA report)
" In addition, Boeing did an independent safety review and also determined that the DU blanking was a safety issue using its own risk assessment process."
Boeing thinks this is a problem too... it's the airlines that don't want to pay for the repair. (AKA it's *their lobbyists that aren't doing their jobs)
I wonder if they ban bananas and Brazil nuts from being eaten on aircraft. One banana equivalent dose of ionised radiation could down a 747 if you're not careful.
I was wondering how long it would take you smug bastards to start chanting "told ya so". Not long but you missed the frist psot so I'm rather disappointed. I still don't care.
"Operators of commercial airplanes have reported numerous cases of portable electronic devices affecting airplane systems during flight. These devices, including laptop and palmtop computers, audio players/recorders, electronic games, cell phones, compact-disc players, electronic toys, and laser pointers, have been suspected of causing such anomalous events as autopilot disconnects, erratic flight deck indications, airplanes turning off course, and uncommanded turns."
http://www.boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/aero_10/interfere_textonly.html
I think the smug bastards were those who refused to put away devices during takeoff, landing and taxiing on the ground. Their few minutes of delay being unacceptable.
Smug bastards who dismissed pilot reports. Things like seeing a device interfere with navigation inflight. Literally taking the device to the cockpit, turning it off and seeing the deviation in heading stop, turning it back on and seeing the deviation in heading reappear, turning it off again and seeing the deviation stop again, etc.
Smug bastards who fail to consider just how antiquated much of the **ground** control equipment used during taxiing is. And who fail to consider that some of the biggest air disasters that have occurred were the results of mistakes while taxiing. For example and aircraft moving across a runway when another is landing.
Failure to replicate things in a lab is not proof that incidents do not occur. Guess what, equipment actually installed in aircraft is not always in pristine and properly installed lab conditions.
As others have pointed out, Boeing says it is not a theoretical problem ...
"Operators of commercial airplanes have reported numerous cases of portable electronic devices affecting airplane systems during flight. These devices, including laptop and palmtop computers, audio players/recorders, electronic games, cell phones, compact-disc players, electronic toys, and laser pointers, have been suspected of causing such anomalous events as autopilot disconnects, erratic flight deck indications, airplanes turning off course, and uncommanded turns. Boeing has recommended that devices suspected of causing these anomalies be turned off during critical stages of flight (takeoff and landing)."
"Boeing conducted a laboratory and airplane test with 16 cell phones typical of those carried by passengers, to determine the emission characteristics of these intentionally transmitting PEDs. The laboratory results indicated that the phones not only produce emissions at the operating frequency, but also produce other emissions that fall within airplane communication/navigation frequency bands (automatic direction finder, high frequency, very high frequency [VHF] omni range/locator, and VHF communications and instrument landing system [ILS]). Emissions at the operating frequency were as high as 60 dB over the airplane equipment emission limits, but the other emissions were generally within airplane equipment emission limits."
http://www.boeing.com/commerci...
Hey, you'd bitch if those mechanics were on welfare too! We just can't please everybody, most certainly not those with your mindset.
The iPhone should not be held next to LED lightbulbs.
Number 1 is reported errors I can sort of understand. (sort of).
Number 2? That wasn't a test, so much as a "we put a mobile phone in a lab and we were shocked to discover that it uses a radio to communicate!!
A radio that should be no closer than 5 meters (outside the cockpit door) from the screen in the cockpit of a plane.
By inverse square law; that means that even if it was 60dB louder than the screen was rated for, it would end up being many orders of magnitude quieter.
And don't give me pilots have mobiles too, just like the CIA requires you to leave your mobile phone in your car when you are at work (see: that recent puff piece about starbucks at langley) Pilots should be required to check their mobile outside the cockpit. (give them a little locker they can put their shit like mobile phones, and fucking shield it).
This isn't Aerospace science people.
I'm guessing they blasted the screens with several kW in the spectrum that is around radar and wi-fi, and they blanked out?
It's probably a problem being directly in front of a radar transmitter, but wifi is just in the right spectrum, much much weaker...